To think that Gove is correct?

[Trapper]

Despite the consistently good GCSE and A level grades, we have been ranked 22nd out of 24 OECD countries for literacy and numeracy. AIBU to think Gove is correct to be challenging the status quo and shaking up education?

Clay I agree, that would be great.

However that sort of thoughtful introduction of a new curriculum is impossible in a country where education is run by a political party with a limited time in power. Quick fixes, tinkering and rushed through changes are what we get when there's alway one eye on the next election. See all the changes being rushed through by 2015 which just happens to be election year.

Education is too important to be left in the hands of politicians. I wonder who is in charge in the more successful countries.

Has there been any research to suggest that Ofsted has had a positive effect on education? I would strongly argue that it has had the opposite. All it does is make headteachers panic and throw the baby out with teh bathwater.

The number of new things that have been introduced over the last few years, 'because Ofsted like it' is ridiulous; 3 part lessons, 5 part lessons, guiding reading/writing/maths, plenary at the end (God forbid anyone should be foolish enough to do that anymore!), mini plenaries dotted throughout, learning objectives hilighted in pink/green/purple, success criterias written on planning but then designed separately with the children in the carpet session that must take no longer than 8 minutes-including sharing the objective and perhaps even teaching them something they didn't know before. Actually, teaching seems to be out now-you need to facilitate their learning-allowing them to find out stuff in a carefully contrived way (not from the board, text book, mouth of an adult etc). AFL, APP, steps for success, WOW words, Brain gym, WILF, WALT, WAN.k-I'm sure there are more!

I was sorting out some old planning from a previous year group recently (maybe 6/7 years ago) and we didn't even have to write learning objectives on there! I had forgotten how different it was. We just wrote the starter/teacher talk bit/3 differentiated activities, plenary, resources and evaluation-that was all that was on there. That class made superb progress with me. But... how did they learn, without a learning objective!!?

Also-why does there seem to be an ever growing number of people escaping from their classroom role to that of SMT? Their sole role seems to be to check up on idle feckless teachers who it seems, if they are not being watched, may perhaps stop moving altogether! Book checks, learning walks, drop ins, observations! Who watches the SMT though... ;) Our new phase leader has said what a breeze it is to be out of the classroom full time. No marking, planning or assessment and apart from the meetings with parents-far less stress! Is that the way to go, perhaps...

I was taught without a learning objective being stated at the beginning or during the lesson. Strangely I still learnt what the teachers were teaching. We are encouraging (in my opinion) laziness in our children by suggesting they won't learn unless they are told what they need to learn, plus aren't you wasting precious minutes with all of this gumpf. WILF, WALT etc... are really good things to use but a good teacher will use them in the process of teaching almost by accident. I probably didn't explain that last sentence well.

noblegiraffe I've just had a quick look at Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan. All have at least part proportional representation as their electoral system - three out of five have full proportional representation. This means they are used to the politics of coalition, which means not quickly dismantling what your predecessors left behind, because your predecessors might well be - er - you. I know we have a coalition in theory in the UK, but we don't really - we just have two different flavours of Tory, one of which is vicious and the other toothless.

The fact that schools could choose the exam boards and thus choose easier papers

There are fewer boards now than when there were GCE and CSE boards. And even within one board there were different syllabi. And students could be entered for a CSE and a GCE i the same subject in the same year.

But then your only experience of state school seems to be your cousin who mixes up homophones.

oh Gove, please please please STOP insisting that schools turn out data after data after data & leave them to turn out well educated, well rounded children.

Let teachers teach & stop forcing them to be administrators.

Am not a teacher btw, just a parent pissed off at a results driven culture

My kids (2 of which are still at secondary school) are fed up with the variety of changes they have had to endure through their schooling. It seems that everytime someone dreams up a 'new' initiative, they are on the receiving end of it. My daughter is annoyed that her AS levels will be considered defunct by the time she finishes her A level course and my youngest son is in the last batch of modular GCSE's. Which will make them meaningless as everyone knows that the new 'old style' exams are best

marriedinwhiteisback
"He has removed the wriggle room and that's the issue for many in education because there will be more clarity and effective assessment of performance as a result.*

How has he done this?

"excellence and rigour"

The man hasn't even defined what he means by rigour.

Unless you mean messing with the exams and claiming that more children failing is rigour.

Exactly Boneyback.

Rigour = exams are harder to pass, measured by more children failing.

More children failing = decline in teaching standards, so more children need to pass and teachers must up their game.

More children then pass = exams are too easy / lazy teachers teaching to the test, means exams must be harder.

And so it will be forever more.

And let's not forget that all children should be above average. I'm not sure whether it was Gove or Wilshaw who said that, but there's really no difference since one is a mouthpiece of the other.

Take rigour, remove the letter 'u' and you get what corpses develop.

Gove's tactics are a disaster. My oldest son is in year 11. This week everyone in his year sat an English mock - from talking to teachers there my understanding is that those who did well will be allowed to sit their paper in November and benefit from the speaking and listening assessment being included. Those who did less well loose the speaking and listening completely. Of course the school will be careful who they enter early as only the first attempt will now count on their statistics! This is so unfair and would explain why Gove's name is mud in most schools surely.

Roo roo

More children 'failing' means more parents likely to send their children to private schools, means less hassle/responsibility for government.

That's what it all boils down to. The government do not care about your children. They want them to fail, they want the teachers to fail, they want to create private schools, they want to wash their hands of your kids.

I shit you not.

If you look at the graph showing literacy/numeracy by age, it is only 16-24 year olds that performed worse than the oldest age group. Other than that, every age group performed better than those older than them (suggesting either an increase in standards year on year, or that as people get older their literacy/numeracy skills decline).

Ofsted was introduced in the mid 90s I believe? So the cohort of children starting school when Ofsted was introduced will now be late teens/early 20s.

What a coincidence!

Well Ofsted is one thing that hasn't been abolished by different governments so one does begin to wonder where standards might have been without it.

A huge comprehensive is overwhelming for some children although only the largest ones can actually offer a full curriculum including academic subjects and more vocational options. A small comprehensive can't necessarily offer a full range of subjects. All children are different and need different sorts of schools to thrive. Teachers are good at some things and not so good at others and need to be able to focus on what they are best at rather than having to differentiate for a child with SEN, a child with behavioural oppositional issues, and a child who is gifted and talented all in the same class.

Am I really such a lone voice where this is concerned. Is that not what is unreasonable from the teacher's and the child's point of view?

My dd is doing GCSE's this year, some of which are IGCE's and I am glad for that. Recently I went to an educational open evening at my son's old school where the Head who runs a blog in a national newspaper welcomed most of the changes as a good thing for education. Indeed the school is reintroducing A'Levels alongside the IB for the first time in many years because at last standards and what is required are rising again and it is again becoming a valuable and rigorous qualification.

married I think you are a lone voice not because the rest of us don't want better education for our children but because the way Gove is going about it just is not the way forwards. He has his eye on the Tory leadership and that's all. He only listens to his yes-men. He is bringing unqualified teachers into the classroom - how can that benefit anyone except in the rarest of exceptional cases? He has brought in Free Schools and claims they are doing better than normal schools when there is no evidence at all to support this; he does statistics as well as Iain Duncan Smith does. Doesn't the Al Madinah fiasco scare you? It does me.

Most of all, many of the things he claims he is introducing are already happening, and he is taking the credit. Shakespeare in primary? My DD1 did it in Yr2 and again in Yr4, back when Labour were in power. Weekly spellings? Same thing. MFL in primary? Ditto.

Gove shouts down dissent with childish soundbites ('Trots', 'Enemies of promise') instead of reasoned arguments - why would anyone trust a man who does that?

And Gove still has not defined what 'rigorous' means in his eyes.

nonno You could be right, scary as that thought is.

I do sometimes worry that by striking, my name is on a government list and if Gove succeeds in his plan to completely destroy the unions, then those who have been on strike will be fired. This possibly makes me seem paranoid, but Gove and his actions give me the heebie jeebies. If he does become PM (and worryingly he does have a big support base with the DM crew), then it will be a return to the 80s with more privatisation, strikes and the final death throws of unions and socialism: education, healthcare and emergency services against the wall.

'Well Ofsted is one thing that hasn't been abolished by different governments'

The label hasn't changed, the criteria they use and the expectations they have change with every inspection I've ever been involved in. Inconsistent, and totally dependent on the composition and origin of the team you get.

So what would teachers do to improve where they are obviously failing our children?

It's like the NHS. I sit in a group and listen to a lot of nurses moaning on about things but lo and behold give them a solution and there is always an excuse why it will not work!

My children did all those things in primary pointy but the problem was, even in an outstanding primary which was at the top of the league tables, some of the qualified teachers gave spellings that were incorrect, mixed up the x and y axes, and referred to reading "allowed". That is not acceptable in my opinion and it strikes me that the teachers who did that (and it was usually the ones who 10 years ago were about 40) had been badly educated in the first instance and then poor skills were embedded at teacher training colleges. There was also MFL teaching going on which was farcical when the teachers in question were not conveying factually correct English in the first place and did not themselves have more than a rusty O'Level.

I think it's very sad that too many qualified teachers are ill equipped with the basic skills.

Also, I can't see the problem with Free Schools - schools that have the freedom to operate without the paralysing influence of some local authorities - presumably with the freedom over budgets and the freedom to exclude.

A lot of things that are moaned about, a narrow curriculum, teaching to the test, only caring about kids getting Cs, Mickey Mouse courses etc could easily be ended by

abolishing league tables

Then schools could focus on the education of the children instead of game-playing to boost their league table status.

'There was also MFL teaching going on which was farcical when the teachers in question were not conveying factually correct English in the first place and did not themselves have more than a rusty O'Level. '

Exactly, it was a ludicrous initiative, especially for those schools who didn't have the funding to employ a MFL teacher.
Unlike the review of the primary curriculum by Sir Jim Rose that was well-received, based on strong educational principles and then dumped before it had seen the light of day in the classroom.
What would I do?
Have policy and initiatives written by educationalists with relevant experience rather than politicians.
Stop continuous government initiatives being thrown at schools for the next 5 years and give schools time to consolidate and embed good practice and then review it.
I've often thought that another of the reasons independent schools do so well, in addition to the known elements, is that they are free of dancing to the government's tune, whichever government it is at the time. They can do what is best for their students in their eyes.

married the teachers my DDs have had in primary have been young - most of them under 30 - and I have to say that in the non-outstanding primary they attended I did not get misspelled spelling lists home, nor were there any of the howlers you are describing.

I do however agree that a rusty O-level is not enough to teach a subject - in countries like Finland and the Netherlands, you need a degree in the subject you are teaching as well as a teaching qualification. This is emphatically not what Michael Gove is supporting though, because it would scupper his agenda of handing over the education system to the private sector.

And I completely agree with what SilverApples is saying - get the politicians out of education and you resolve a lot of the problems.

the problem with politics being involved in anything is that Politicians have to first identify a "crisis". this "crisis" will have been left by the previous govt and its the new govts job to solve it. so they spend ages defining the "crisis", they spend money producing data to back it up and they spend ages talking about it and how "something has to be done or else" then they define their plan to tackle the crisis. they ask the opinions of people who already agree with them and put their plan into action. it will be badly thought through and have been made by people with no real knowledge of the subject. and consequently it will fail and create another crisis. I am old. I have seen this with education before. no one can get it right because they are politicians. if the bank of England can be independent to deal with monetary policy then why cant education be the same. there is no quick fix. we all know our kids are less bright now than they were. we all know that teachers teach to the test because of league tables and we all know Ofsted doesn't achieve what it was supposed to. there is no quick fix. this is a long long term problem where the solution is going to take 10+ years to implement. that's what we should be lobbying for. taking education away from politicians and giving it to an independent group.